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Some Theat and Taunt Questions Answered

We got a few search terms with questions in them. I think I answered them in my tanking posts but I thought it might be good to recap it.

The point of them is the difference between a taunt and a forced attack.

“if you have full threat and you taunt wh(at happens?)”
Nothing. You get no more threat and no benefit at all. Oh one thing does happen… if you taunt a lot the target gets a temporary taunt immunity.

“taunt forces them to attack you for how (long?)”
For most taunts, no time at all. You only hold the target for as long as it takes for someone to get 10% more threat than you (melee) or 30% more (ranged). If that happens a nano second later then you drop the target right away. If that takes 3 hours then you hold agro for 3 hours. A different class of ability causes things to attack you for a set period of time. Those are called ‘forced attacks’. I am unaware of any ability that contains BOTH the attributes of a ‘taunt’ and those of a ‘forced attack’

To recap for both of these questions:

A ‘taunt’ bumps you up to 1 higher threat than the highest thing on the targets threat list and then makes it attack you. This is also called ‘bumping to you to the top of the list’ (since you have to actually have 10 or 30% extra to get there manually). So it basically does a ‘forced attack’ but with ZERO time duration. The only thing that forced attack does it make it so you don’t have to have 10% or 30% higher than the next highest critter.

A true ‘forced attack’ does NOT increase your threat. It simply makes the target go after you for a preset period of time. Basically the ‘agro list’ in the critter’s head is suspended for a few seconds and it only cares about you. When that time is up it goes back to whoever is top of the list.

NOTE: They put the micro forced attack on taunts because otherwise they would have had to make you get 130% threat from a taunt. Which would have been over powered.

As I said before I know of no ability that does both a real ‘taunt’ and also an actual ‘forced attack’ that last more than a nano-second. Some abilities do have tip text that makes this misleading. I am looking at you ‘mocking blow’.

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7 Responses

Paladin taunt (Hand of righteousness) puts you one higher than the other guy’s threat, forces attack on you for three seconds, and if you weren’t highest when you tuanted does about 1500 damage at 80th in high end gear.

Thanks for the clarification on that one: I believe HoR is the only taunt in the game that does damage. This is why sometimes Ret pallies use it in their rotation even though, as a taunt, they shouldn’t.

Actually I think if a warrior glyphs ‘barbaric insults’ then mocking blow becomes an actual taunt and does extra damage on top of that. In that case it actual does do a taunt and a forced attack and some damage on top of that. So a glyphed mocking blow is the exception as well to what I said about combining a taunt and a forced attack. I just did not want to go into the fringe cases.

Every taunt has an instantaneous, or at least very short, forced attack. They have to since they don’t give you 110% or 130%. I have not see anything about it being 3 seconds. But it does not matter really. The most important point is which attacks ONLY have a forced attack and don’t have the ‘your the #1 threat’ effect.

Note in your link the Buff with the 3 secs remaining. That is the forced attack portion. Granted I got the name wrong. But I’m bad with names, and was dead on about the effects.

I’ve often used Hand of Reckoning to pull mobs back from hunters to me. As long as I can get some damage in and close on the mob before the three secs, I can keep it. Otherwise at the end of three secs they turn right around at the hunter that never stopped shooting at the mob. Not in two or one when they long outstripped the aggro from the damage effect.

Addition: If you are in melee range, you only need 110% threat to pull aggro (the 130% listed is for ranged attackers).

So a taunt basically gives you same threat as the highest on the list (or +1 – who can tell in the millions) and makes you the “current aggro target”. Your next highest on the list thus has to generate at least 10% more than your current to pull aggro off again.

Oh god.. this is getting more confusing with every line. Best stop here 🙂